It felt now as if guilt was his primary emotion.

He felt lost and alone in that moment, hoping that he wasn’t bleeding out his need for some kindness.

Tom? Are you okay?” Jena asked tentatively.Apart from the fact that he wanted to cry?“Yeah. ” He smiled. “I’m great.

Slowly, tears began to tip over again from her swollen eyelids, leaving sad, pale trails in her ruined makeup, and as always when he made a witness cry, James felt uncomfortably like the school bully.

James felt as he always felt waiting to deliver this kind of news: like an emotional mugger, smashing into other people's calm lives, leaving agony and loss behind. The aloofness of his role built his guilt, his distance from their pain. That he could introduce himself to people to deliver news that ruined them, with no wounds of his own to show in solidarity. He was the professional, like a doctor, slicing through their existence then going back to his own clean life.

From the start he'd sworn to himself that the job would never make him callous. But here he was, annoyed at someone for having the gall to get murdered when he had other plans.